I began myself to be a little sceptical about Osman's honesty. I was paying as much for the forage of the five horses as if I had been in England. The poor brutes were getting thinner every day. I determined to stop at a farmhouse and buy some barley. On giving this to the horses, they ate it ravenously, thus confirming my suspicions. "Osman, you did not feed the horses this morning!" I exclaimed. "Feed them, Effendi! I fed all of them!" "But see how hungry they are, they have eaten all the barley you have just given them." "Yes, sir, they are wonderful horses. They are always hungry. It is a good sign in a horse to be always hungry." I was not to be taken in by this remark, and so desired Radford in future to see the horses fed. At the same time I resolved to keep a sharp look-out on Osman. It was true that a considerable portion of his time was spent in praying; however, I began to be of my English servant's opinion, that when the Turk was not engaged in prayer, he was either planning or executing a theft, and that all these devotions were performed merely with the view of throwing me off my guard. We crossed the Tchechmet; it is a tributary of the Sakaria river, and about thirty yards wide. There was a wooden bridge over the stream, but without any parapets; the height from the water being about twelve feet. This river is fordable in many places, the banks are not precipitous, and the bottom is firm. A messenger, sent forward from the village of Ayash, had informed the Mudir at Istanos, our next station, that an English traveller was on the road. The official, attended by the Cadi and two or three Zaptiehs, came out to meet us. All the party, with the exception of the gendarmes, were clad in long dark blue dressing-gowns, which draggled some distance below the riders' stirrups. The mule which the Cadi rode was not of a quiet disposition; from time to time he kicked as violently as a mule can kick, at his master's robe, the Cadi saving himself by clinging convulsively to the high pommel of his saddle. Istanos is a little distance from the direct road to Angora. There was no other good halting-place in the neighbourhood, so I determined to make a slight detour and remain there for the night—the more particularly as Istanos is a village of historic fame, the tradition being still extant, that it is the place[7] where Alexander the Great cut the Gordian knot. The village, which contains 400 houses—half belonging to Armenians, half to Turks—is on the right bank of the river Owas. A lofty rock overhangs the stream, and according to the Mudir, there were several huge caverns which in days long gone by had been inhabited by bands of marauders.